“Life is very fleeting. It’s important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we’ve done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That’s it.” – Oscar Niemeyer

We have booked our flights and officially leave for Rio in the beginning of August. I have an internal clock counting down and am scratching off days until departure in my mind. There is a sense of relief that several hurdles have been passed and a feeling of anxiety for the ones yet to come.

We are sorting, packing and weighing the luggage and hoping we don’t have a Sophia’s Choice sort of moment at the luggage check-in. We decided to go the excess baggage route instead of shipping by container after researching the options by speaking to several shipping companies, getting quotes, reading forum and blog posts that warned about hidden extra costs for brokers and storage, delays and general red tape madness. Other posts lamented that if they had it to do all over again they’d sell everything and by new in Brazil. This isn’t really an option for us but we did decide to sell what we could let go and take what we really needed. Also we’re taking things that would be ridiculously expensive to buy in Brazil. This includes all electronics. It depends on the airline how much excess luggage they allow, the maximum accepted weight and the extra charge for each. So, now that we’ve figured out what our airline’s policies are we are loading up and hoping for the best.